Book Information: In the Skin of a Lion

Predecessor to The English Patient in which the characters of Hana, the orphaned girl, and Caravaggio, the thief, appear for the first time.

Patrick Lewis arrives in Toronto in the 1920s as an immigrant from Canada's backwoods. In this throbbing, polyglot city he earns his living searching for a vanished millionaire and tunneling beneath Lake Ontario; in the course of his adventures he falls in love with two actresses.

Edition #1: In the Skin of a Lion

"Ondaatje's fiction is as original and evocative as any being written today. A brilliantly imaginative blend of history, lore, passion and poetry, In the Skin of the Lion is his best book." Russell Banks

"A brilliant novel of power and style, dealing with human situations through verbal cinema... An extraordinary performance." Leon Edel